Is Flash The Future Of The Internet?

[joshjones]

There is a lot of SEO discussion here. After reading a lot about how to effectively SEO your site, wouldn't that consist of adding appropriate meta information and such to your html file?

flash still has to exist in an html, eithe embedded or done through CSS to validate, why not make your html page SEO friendly. I understand it can't be indexed according to content though.

but when I read an SEO article that discusses the amazing "ten best ways to" there is hardly any discussion about this, but rather other techniques of writing articles, submitting to certain locations, making sure not to trick engines, etc. etc. very rarely do they say one of the top ten SEO discuss all aspects of HTML.

I have no doubt there is ways to make sure your html with flash gets SEO optimized in a way that would be nearly equivilant to an regular page being indexed... anybody have a good location?

[bj]

I have no doubt there is ways to make sure your html with flash gets SEO optimized in a way that would be nearly equivilant to an regular page being indexed... anybody have a good location?

There's really only one rule you have to remember. Any text you put into a flash animation will not be indexed. Therefore you either need to avoid putting text into flash animations, OR offer congruently a non flash version of the site that can be indexed.

Until the big three index text in flash (none of them do currently) it doesn't pay to do complete sites in flash, nor have your splash page in flash without making alternative provisions for the SE spiders.

[Andilinks]

Yes Josh, I too have puzzled over why obviously very expensive flash productions pay absolutely no attention to SEO factors. Again I think it's the designer's conceit, the Flash-Master artisté may be a genius in that medium but is rather dense commercially and has too large an ego to work with someone more attuned to SEO.

Google pays little attention to meta tags and other SE's are much less effective so actual html text would have to be used on the page (gasp).

[DrTandem1]

All-Flash sites used by large companies are not concerned with SEO. The internet is supplementing their TV, radio and print ads. In other words, visitors to their sites are coming from other ads not search engines.

The average site that doesn't have that kind of presence relies more heavily on visitors from search engines.

So, Flash for smaller sites would best be used as one would use an animated GIF. Not for the whole page, just as an accent.

As many have mentioned, the first thing I look for when I hit a Flash splash page is the skip intro button. It's an added barrier and an added expense that you don't need.

[Andilinks]

In other words, visitors to their sites are coming from other ads not search engines.

If I were an SEO I would see this as a huge marketing opportunity and develop a presentation to address this while calling on mega-prospects.

Fortunately I have better things to do.

[kgun]

Cheers Andi.

Post 666 :-)

Here is a Rose Free Flash Intro Page

It has a skip button.

[Andilinks]

Thanks for the rose kgun.

But the significance of the number 666 as an indicator of the devil has been all blown out of proportion by popular culture.

When the book of Revelation was written Rome used violence to punish critics. 666 was just a code used to avoid this evil.

The small leathery creatures emerging from my air vents this afternoon are very odd though.

This will be post 667, maybe that will stop them.

[kgun]

I could not resist commenting the number :-)

Fractal numbers are more beautiful than natural.

Look at these animated fractals some with fractal music, most probably made by simple fractal algorithms invented in the USA in the early 1970's.

[joshjones]

I don't think this discussion was about whether or not flash can fit into the Search Engines. If we completely disregard Search Engines for a moment and assume somebody makes it to your site, THEN, is flash the next generation...

My take is that no technology is going to be better than another when it really comes down to Search Engines. Or else the engines need to revise how they catagories things. IF your site has something to offer, people will look for it, word will spread, you will get visitors, engines will categorize accordingly. IF your site is standard old store, forum, or other, then you will still be 1 millionth result.

If our only intent is to use various tactics to get a user to our site, then I would agree that HTML has many more tricks usable to do so, but once the user gets there, which technology do people think presents better?

I do think there is a lot of room to grow, as the previous post said, bank is going to be had once adobe works out these accessability, searching, and general text classificiations.

[joshjones]

And I agree, preloaders suck, hardly an issue with the platform though. That is a designer/developer issue... like the use of animated .gif characters in html. Hardly an html issue, just terrible design...

[RichardLynch]

Originally Posted by carlos_p

Yeah, right... Just the other day, at my front door, an elderly man was hit by a car. Let's close down traffic, ban cars...
Please don't confuse technology with its bad use.

These jukeboxes could be built to run in Flash Player 6 if the developer wanted to do so.

Okay then.

Flash is fine.

But 99.9999999% of Flash Developers suck!

Net Result: I *still* hate Flash.

[bluewren]

I agree with the Seo who posted and showed his site was using flash in the heading.The text and the picture of the world in the background and the text
moving across it and coming forward.That is what I want using my own pictures ofcourse.
Flash introduction pages fascinated me and exited at first, a bit like a child looking at a shiny bauble,unable to comprehend it.So clever and yes I wanted one also for exactly that the ego boost hey everyone look at me ..no hands.But, even then it had to be very well done or it irritated me. How spot on you were the viewer's needs slipped my mind.
I had come to the conclusion myself that that little bit on the heading was it just enough to show how clever and with it I am;0. but not to distract from the content and the real message of the website.thanks for affirming that for me.
Only I am not even that clever ....yet!:).

[BobbyBill]

Originally Posted by bj

There's really only one rule you have to remember. Any text you put into a flash animation will not be indexed. Therefore you either need to avoid putting text into flash animations, OR offer congruently a non flash version of the site that can be indexed.

Wrong! There are multiple ways get flash text indexed. Take a look here: http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

I prefer to define a variable in the html code that gets printed in the SWF movie. This technique has been around for a while it just requires a little bit of programming knowledge to accomplish it. I have never been formaly trained in any prgramming language, including action script, but I was able to accomplish this. I'm pretty sure you can even use header tags and html links and it will display correctly in the flash file.

[bj]

So, BobbyBill, how are those sites doing in the SERPs? Do you have any proof what you say is correct, and that your flash sites coded this way do well in SE listings?

[Andilinks]

Originally Posted by BobbyBill

I prefer to define a variable in the html code that gets printed in the SWF movie.

But the search engine is still not decompiling or indexing the text content from the actual .swf file you are simply getting the variable from the html code indexed.

This can also be accomplished more easily without all the fancy JavaScript, but people just don't. That's the point, if they did Flash would have much greater utility.

[WebMasterKrames]

Originally Posted by bj

So, BobbyBill, how are those sites doing in the SERPs? Do you have any proof what you say is correct, and that your flash sites coded this way do well in SE listings?

You're right BJ(This is Bobby Bill at work, too lazy to log into my private account), if I'm going to be so cocky I should have some proof.

I've got one site I am using this technique for that is up now, but I'm still in the process of getting IBL's for it and it's only been online for a few months so it's not in the SE's much yet.

I've got a couple redesigns coming up that I am planning to use this technique on as well, I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm sure you know how slow the process is, but I'm sure this thread will still be around.

[bj]

I'm also going to point out something to you. It may be that you end up doing fine since you take the time to pay this sort of attention to your flash development as it relates to SERPs, but I imagine I'm not far wrong in saying you're most likely in a very small minority. And if I'm right about that, and about the cost in extra dev time to pay attention to those types of details, then me saying Flash sites are still a bad idea in most cases is still accurate.

When I set up a wordpress site for a client I do the ten or so minutes of additional work that makes their sites more easily place in the SERPS. I know that I am in the minority of frontend WP devs in doing that, my clients have told me so. I can't imagine that flash dev is any different.

[WebMasterKrames]

Here's a high flash content site I did in 100 hours, and it only took that long because it took a looong time to do the 3d animations of the mattresses(in the "Quality Revealed" section:

www.mattresszoneusa.com

It doesn't have a high PR because:
1. They never wrote any copy for the site and didn't want to pay me to do it.

2. They didn't accept my offer to put together a list of reccomended sites to advertise on and get some good IBL's

Thus why I didn't use this as an example in my previous posts. But I did track how long it took to create this site. If they didn't ask for the 3d animation, it probably would have only taken about 50 hours at the most. That's not that long is it?

[WebMasterKrames]

Originally Posted by bj

... you're most likely in a very small minority.

Of course I am! I'm the greatest web designer of all time. :-P

And the best looking.

[bj]

LOL! and your head fits through a normal size doorway? ;)

[WebMasterKrames]

Actually, due to my incredibly large brain I have to turn sideways to fit my head through most doorways. How did you know?

[Dinghus]

I've been saying that since Flash 4 (or was it 3?).

I've helped push the envelope with flash by doing things like hooking into Amazon and PayPal Pro (still in the works).

Flash is still untapped in my not so humble opinion. Of course the big problem is that SEs don't rank flash only sites so people don't want them.

If only AS could hook right into a db instead of having to go through another language.